> Vim's actually an excellent example of my previous point, that ease of
> use != short learning curve. I'm pretty sure I don't know half of vim's
> keybindings yet, but the ones I do know make it a lot easier than, say,
> gedit. If I want to do something in vim, I'm usually quite confident that
> that's because I don't know how to do it (and subsequently look it up)
> rather than it lacks the feature.
I am crazy for elvis, actually. I am bit worried because elvis seems (I would
welcome to be mistaken), in the carabinieri-joke sense (see the other reply)
perhaps, unmaintained since too many years ... it can't be, real world error
less programs do not exist.
Or then, not in the way [maintained] that makes me enthusiastic really: I
have seen a GNOME patch in the news (shudder ... I am think at the Midnight
Commander). In fact, I am increasingly feeling like I would be in company of
a given Mr. Procrustes, the fellow from the bed: I suspect that I will have
to accept/envisage the idea to become *stretched* a bit up to the size of vim
(elvis is significantly slimmer: less code/bloat <=> less errors in general).
The alternative being: starting to maintain elvis by myself.
Anyway, while nervously browsing links on elvis, right now, I have not been
able to resist revisiting a classic link (helps keeping the morale up):
Why, oh WHY, do those [EMAIL PROTECTED] nutheads use vi?
http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html
Maybe this following point (Misconception #3), which is perfectly applicable to
Ion too, will find us in agreement:
Misconception #3: you gotta be nuts and/or a genius to use it
Well, I hope that with the above explanations and examples, you have
already seen some of the power that vi/vim provides. Learning it is tough
(see below), but if you're going to be editing code 8 hours or more a day
for years, it's the second best investment after learning touch typing
(which you already know, right? If not, don't bother with vi, learn
that first). A learning curve of weeks make sense for such a lifetime
investment. And, at least, you won't have a dumb assistant to annoy you to
death.
The point is, with vi, your keyboard becomes a huge specialized
text-editing gamepad with almost a hundred buttons. Each of them has
at least two functions, shifted and unshifted, so you have almost two
hundred functions at a single keypress (not counting Shift). Commands
are incredibly powerful for text editing, and you can even combine them
to obtain the best results. While typing some text, it is a regular
keyboard, but when you're back to normal mode you have the best-designed
text-editing machine there is, and it shows.
I do not intend to start a flame war on editors otherwise. The author of the
article (and pheromone-bait resistant *insect*) ;) tells in his intro
No, they are not dinosaurs [Roy: vi/vim users ... with reference to
the "30-years-old vi"] who don't want to catch up with the times - the
community of vi users just keeps growing: myself, I only got started
2 years ago (after over 10 years of being a professional programmer).
Friends of mine are converting today. Heck, most vi users were not even
born when vi was written!
just in case.
Cheers,
/Roy Lanek
P.S.
More subtly, in linguistic, oral and written languages are regarded as
different beasts--with divergent/discrepant modalities--within every different
language. It would be nonsense to approach text in language as it would be
an oral medium (I am thinking at your "intuitive" referring ... perhaps; in
the sense of *more comfortable*) in general. The difficulty is insurmountable.
A summation of half-truths/things done half-way (half-way because they are
inherently limited) do not make a truth or something conclusive. One is still
left at case zero, and so till he decides to take the adequate path.
--
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS dimana tak da lang, aku lah lang, kata
SSSSS . s l a c k w a r e SSSSSS belalang--where there are no eagles, I am
SSSSS +------------ linux SSSSSS the one, said the grasshopper [where's no
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS top dogs, underdogs will be seen as one]
